Rows of seats on modern aircraft are often mounted to seat tracks that run along the floor of the passenger cabin. The rows of seats are secured to the tracks and allow for the spacing between the rows to be adjusted as desired. For instance, an airline may decide after initial delivery of the aircraft to reduce the spacing between the rows and enable more seats to be installed in the aircraft, to increase the spacing between the rows and enable fewer seats to be installed in the aircraft, etc. The spacing between the rows is sometimes referred to as the seat pitch. Reconfiguring the seat pitch can be referred to in the aircraft industry as a seat re-pitch or simply, a re-pitch.
Seats in modern aircraft include a number of electrical and/or electronic systems that are used by passengers. For instance, the seats may include displays, headphone connections, controls to adjust channels for audio/video, etc. Power and/or data are typically provided to the seats utilizing electrical wiring that runs along the tracks or alongside the tracks. The wiring is often daisy-chained from one row to the next row along the tracks for simplicity.
A seat track cover is used to cover the exposed tracks between the rows as well as the row-to-row wiring. The track cover is mounted on the track, and is either wide enough to cover wiring that runs alongside the track, or is sized to cover the track and allow electrical wiring to run inside of the track cover.
If an airline makes a decision to re-pitch the seats on the aircraft and their track system contains electrical wiring in the track cover, then the track covers are often either too short or too long to accommodate the new seat pitch. The track covers are often discarded in this case, and new track covers are fabricated based on the new seat pitch. However, this process is expensive and time consuming.